Teaching a Friend to Play Disc Golf

I went out a few weeks ago with my friend Mike who had never even heard of disc golf before, let alone played it. I personally enjoy introducing friends to the sport, even though it can slow down a round of 18 considerably. This is not the first time I've taken a friend out, but this time I decided to learn from past mistakes and try a few new things. My goal was to get Mike to throw straight and avoid losing any discs on his first round. Here was my strategy:

1. No Drivers - Let's face it...drivers are hard to control and if you can't throw one straight, it's going to get lost. There is nothing more frustrating that spending more time looking for discs than actually playing disc golf. I've seen lots of friends get turned off of the sport because of frustration. No Innova Katana today!

2. Understable Mid-Ranges - I let Mike use my favorite beaten-in Innova Stingray for his drives. If you've never thrown a stingray before I highly recommend it. It's the only mid-range I've used that will hold an anhyzer forever. Mike found a lot of success on drives with my Stingray.

3. Just Throw Straight - My initial instructions were to avoid "muscling" the disc and just throw it straight. To Mike's surprise (not mine) his drives were going farther at 50% power. All experienced disc golfers know this, but to a beginner it is hard to imagine form beats muscle every time. We've all seen 150 lb kids huck a disc 400 ft. (and felt ashamed afterwards!)

As a result of my teachings (and just because disc golf is awesome) Mike had a really good time. Since then he picked out a few new discs (BUZZZ, Surge SS, Wizard...some of my favorites)